Fate, Unwound
by glasshibou
Summary: Sarah would like very much to be able to live out the life she has with her family in the peace she feels she'd earned. Unfortunately, the universe doesn't agree. When someone comes calling to collect on a favor, Sarah enters into the realm of gods and goddesses again... And this time, she's not sure she'll make it out. (A sequel to Fairytale, Refuted)
1. The Weaver Watched

Sometimes, the darkest part of the night when she couldn't sleep, Sarah remembered the nothingness. She remembered how it clogged her ears and seeped into her chest. She remembered how being in it felt like floating or not existing at all. When it got too bad, she'd turn her bedroom lights on and curl up under her blankets just to feel the heat. Sometimes, even with the lights on, she felt like she'd never left—that everything that happened after was a dream, a trick, an illusion.

In those small moments, she feared she would wake only to die with the rest of the world. That it was all a clever ploy, that she hadn't really won or saved anything. After all, how many times can a heroine simply talk her villains down? Twice seemed too lucky already. Too unlikely.

It was in these moments that she thought she could feel the thread wrapped around her wrist, burning. But no matter how hard she looked, she couldn't actually see it. She hadn't actually seen it since she used it to find her way back to Jareth—but then again, she probably hadn't needed to.

Whatever the reason, it acted like a tether, a reminder that her world was real and what she did to secure it.

When did she first notice she wasn't aging? After the first decade, certainly. Perhaps after Karen started asking her what facial cream she used. Or was it when she realized she had a collection of expired licenses in which she wore the exact same face? Or, the worst of all, when Toby finally seemed to catch up to her in age? That was probably the final nail in the coffin, she decided. Of all the things she hadn't prepared herself for, that was the one that did her in.

It was after Toby's twenty-third birthday—the birthday in which he finally surpassed her—that she ran to Jareth. Their meetings were infrequent and unplanned. Sarah felt herself slipping into a way of thought that was wholly unnatural to her—at first—that let time slip away from her. After all, she no longer felt its sting. It didn't matter if she hadn't seen somebody in years because it didn't particularly matter to her. Until it did. It never mattered with Jareth because time stilled for him, too.

But that evening of her not-so-little brother's birthday she found her way to the deepest part of the forest she'd helped to regrow and found the king within.

She begged him to teach her magics, the illusions that she knew he was familiar with. They would trick everybody's eyes—but not their minds because Sarah thought that was a cruelty—and have them see her at the age she should have been, not the age she was stuck at. She got better and deepened the illusion every few years, and when she looked at her magicked appearance in her bathroom mirror she thought _this is how it should have been_. _This is what feels like home_.

Alyssa married and had the child that she swore she'd never have, but Sarah did not attend her wedding and did not attend the baby shower. Invitations stopped coming until most of their interactions happened through cards sent out at holidays or the occasional email. They'd moved out of the apartment they shared not long after Sarah bartered away her mortality; although she didn't feel _changed_ in that instant, she knew that things would change, eventually. Plus, she was graduating.

Sarah found herself another apartment, and it didn't matter that it was tiny because Jareth continued to bend reality. Sometimes extra rooms would crop up, and that usually meant that he was in a foul mood and some of the denizens of the forest would soon be paying her a visit. Through the intervening years, Sarah never quite managed to tame the goblins, though they didn't scrawl lewd words on her walls with lipstick anymore and left her clothes largely unmolested. She thought it was just as well because goblins wouldn't really be goblins without mischief; the two ideas were almost inseparable. And although she still lived in an apartment, she no longer had to share it with anybody; the damage that the denizens of the forest wrought was contained to one small, safe space on Sarah's side.

Which is what she found herself cleaning up now. Time didn't pass quite the same way it did in the forest as it did in Sarah's world. That had been true even when it was the labyrinth, so the idea of one year passing into another fascinated the goblins. If they expected magic or whimsy or some sort of monumental explosion, they were sorely mistaken. There were fireworks, of course, and Sarah's apartment was close enough to the park that they could almost be seen between the roofs of other buildings. The goblins had to settle for those and watching the clock tick past the last minute of the old year and into the first minute of the new one.

They pouted and moaned until Sarah relented and allowed them to throw themselves something closer to the party they had no doubt been expecting, which was why she was picking ribbons up off the floor and sweeping glitter into little piles to be disposed of later. She knew she should _probably_ deal with the patches of forgotten fur and the stains she hoped were ale first, but couldn't quite muster the enthusiasm needed.

Sarah sighed and pulled her hair back with an elastic, cracking knuckles as soon as her hands were free.

"Okay, Sarah. We can do this."

Her apartment really _was_ a mess. She flicked her vacuum cleaner on and sucked the first pile of glitter up. Seemingly endless quantities of the stuff ground itself into her carpet and was almost impossible to remove. There _had_ to be a better way to utilize magic that didn't leave piles of the stuff behind, but Sarah hadn't made herself a very good student in that respect. Most of what she knew was cobbled-together castoffs she managed to pick up from watching others. Although Jareth and a few of the more lucid goblins had offered to teach her, she never took them up on it. After all, she had her family, and she had her career mostly because that was what her family expected of her. For as long as they were around—or, more precisely, as long as she could be around them—she planned on doing so.

Maybe, one day, she'd skip off and go live in the forest. Maybe. Some part of her knew that was unlikely because she couldn't stand being in it, being near _him_ for too long.

At least _then_ she wouldn't have to empty her vacuum with far more frequency than she thought reasonable. Sarah snorted as she dumped the canister out into her trash can, watching the glitter trickle down through the rest of her garbage. After everything was picked up, she would have to go over her carpet at least twice more to make sure all of the hair and glitter was up; it tended to grind into the floor and reappear at inopportune moments. Although she didn't like living in filth, she normally wouldn't have worried about getting it so clean so soon. After all, something was only going to come back after some lost artifact—most likely with a few friends—and the process would begin again.

But Sarah had the oddest feeling curling under her heart that she would soon have company—and not any company from the forest.

 _Maybe I should start playing smooth jazz again_ , she thought. The goblins hated it as if it caused them pain, and it kept them away even if it did make her feel a little bad. And even in just the years she'd witnessed, technology had made huge strides; instead of the rack of CDs she had when the goblins _first_ invaded her life, she could simply summon any song she desired on her phone. It was much easier and less of a potential mess to clean up. She shot an irritated glare to the last remaining pile of glitter and threatened it with the vacuum.

"You're next," she promised. It sat innocently on her carpet and glimmered up at her.

Sarah clicked the vacuum canister back into place and plugged the machine back into her wall so that she could turn it on. As it roared to life, her left wrist twinged. Sarah ignored it and went to work removing as much of the glitter as she could in one fell swoop.

She happily ignored it for seventeen minutes and thirty-nine seconds until her wrist actually _burned_. Sarah yelped and dropped the vacuum so that she could massage her wrist with her other hand, wincing at the pain. The faintest of red lines slowly materialized around her left wrist, arcing around to connect in a circle, the same way the thread had once upon a time.

"Damn," Sarah said, and she was so involved with the pain in her wrist that she almost missed the knocking at her door.

Sarah could be forgiven for this; the walls were thin, so an exuberant knocker at her neighbor's door could easily be mistaken for a timid one at her own, and she so rarely got visitors that it wasn't something she was in the habit of expecting. As it was, the person on the other side of the door had to knock twice before Sarah realized it. She clicked off the vacuum and put her hand behind her back.

"Hello?" she asked as she opened the door.

But there was nothing there—no visitor waiting to be let inside or neighbor looking to borrow something or other. Sarah snorted and went to shut her door again. Perhaps she really had heard somebody else at a neighbor's door. It wouldn't be the first time, and she doubted it would be the last.

Except her door didn't close, and the lock didn't latch like it normally would have. Sarah kept it locked at all times because there was nothing worse than having some friend stumble in to see her speaking casually to a large and impossibly hairy orange beast on her living room couch, and Sarah only had to learn that lesson once.

She stooped low to pick up the little parcel and unwound the twine wrapped around it, which was knotted tight at the center. When she finally picked it apart, Sarah plucked the first page out of the folded pile. The paper was rough and yellowed with age, and the ink covering it was splotchy, clotted brown, and faded in places. It kept wanting to fold back up, and Sarah was careful as she flattened it out on her kitchen table. It was brittle, especially at the folds, and Sarah didn't want to ruin it just in case somebody came looking for it later.

All thoughts of preservation were abandoned as soon as she got halfway through the first page. It detailed her second run through the labyrinth—or what had been the labyrinth. She got to the part where she stood like a fool in the ancient throne room and threw down the page in disgust. She knew what came next; she did not need a reminder. More than that, she was tired of magical books barging into her life and telling her her past.

Sarah considered throwing it away and forgetting about it, but she decided that burning it would be best. It would have to wait a little until the weather was nice enough for her to open up her windows so she didn't set off smoke alarms, and her metal trash can was full at the moment anyway.

"Knock, knock!"

Sarah cursed inwardly, remembering that she hadn't actually shut her front door after she picked up the latest magical intrusion into her life. She turned, not so far away from the door that she couldn't physically block whoever was at the door, but she stopped short when she saw who it was.

"What's up?" Belinda asked, pushing her way past Sarah into the apartment. "Do you _know_ how difficult you are to find?"

Sarah blinked at her guest. She remembered Belinda, of course—it would have taken some effort to forget the witch and her candy-colored hair—but she never actually expected to see her again, looked as untouched by time as Sarah herself did. She wore a satchel that looked like it could fall apart at the seams at any moment, and this time her hair was a bright orange, not purple, but otherwise…

"You haven't changed," Sarah stated, as if Belinda needed to be reminded of that small fact.

"Neither have you," Belinda pointed out, glancing nervously out Sarah's windows while she tugged the gauzy curtains shut. "Are you going to close your door?"

Sarah closed her door and apologized for the mess in her apartment, as if she really had that much control over it. Even though her strange brand of personal intuition told her _somebody_ was coming, she didn't know the arrival was so imminent.

Belinda heaved a sigh of relief and flopped down onto Sarah's previously be-ribboned loveseat and covered her eyes with the crook of her arm.

"I need your help," she moaned. "Please, Sarah. I helped you."

Though Sarah remembered Belinda's help being dubious at best, she couldn't deny that the witch had provided _some_ sort of aid, even the aid was burning a line on her wrist at the moment. So when Belinda rolled over and batted her big, brown eyes at her, all Sarah could say was "of course." She wasn't the type of person to say no to somebody in need.

"Oh, good," Belinda said. "I was really hoping that you would say that. You're sort of my only chance left."

"Oh," said Sarah, wondering how many people Belinda tried before she came to her and what sort of request they'd all denied. "Well, I am happy to help, of course." She wanted to ask what, exactly, Belinda had in mind, but hoped that Belinda wouldn't need prompting. Not knowing the witch that well, Sarah wasn't sure if she would need to ask or not.

Belinda nodded and then looked at Sarah's wrist, tilting her head to the side in confusion.

"Is something wrong with your hand?" Belinda reached out and grabbed Sarah's fingers, pulling her wrist close for inspection. "Is it the thread?"

Sarah was accustomed to Belinda being generally carefree and heedless of general consequences, like kicking angry Goblin Kings who were sort of gods out of her caravan so she could discuss secrets with the human representation of their downfall. Even when Belinda was serious, there was an undertone of her usual personality. But this Belinda, prodding anxiously at Sarah's wrist, was more grave than Sarah thought she could ever be.

"Actually," Sarah said, glad she didn't have to bring it up herself, "now that you ask, yes. Every now and then it hurts, like it's tightening or being yanked from the other end, but I know it isn't Jareth. And I can't… I don't…" Sarah paused and bit her lip, wondering how she should continue the conversation. Belinda saved her—or ruined her opportunity, depending on how Sarah wanted to look at it—by dropping her hand and standing.

" _What_ ," Belinda started, all attention focused on the papers Sarah had abandoned earlier, "is _that_ , and when did you get it?"

* * *

 **A/N**

This will be the _only_ author's note I will place in this story. For future commentary (and there will be _lots_ ) please check out my tumblr blog glass-hibou! I'll be posting the footnotes for each chapter, as well as sneak peeks for upcoming chapters. And because I love replying to anon reviewers, those will go there as well; I'm hoping it will cut down on clutter here.

See you there!


	2. And As The Mazy Web She Whirls

"It came right before you did. I thought it might have been meant for a neighbor, maybe, but…" Sarah let her sentence trail off.

Belinda shook her head wordlessly and pulled the twine away from the crumbling pages. Her hands skimmed over them lovingly, tracing the swoops and swirls of the letters on the thick paper.

"No," she whispered. "Not for you. I know this handwriting." The witch bit her lip and pulled out the last page. Her eyes filled with tears as she traces the signed name.

"Orinda. Taliesin. Sarah, she was so close… And I was late. Again." Fat tears rolled down Belinda's face, but to Sarah, who was unsure how to comfort her, the witch seemed to be more angry than grieving. She uttered something in a language Sarah didn't recognize, but was sure was a swear.

Belinda flipped to the front page and read through the packet thoroughly, mouthing the words. Sarah waited and watched, and while she wanted an explanation, she was not optimistic. She felt that she'd been plucked out of her own life and dropped in the middle of a play that she knew none of the lines to-again.

"Have you any particular connection to a stag, Sarah?"

Sarah blinked, taken aback by the question. Belinda, who just moments earlier had been on the brink of tears, stared at her, waiting for a reply.

"No, I can't-well, wait, my high school's mascot was a stag. There were all of these annoying jokes about us all being horny, so-"

Belinda smiled, closed her eyes, and let loose a gusty sigh. "Good; that's some of the best news I've heard in about a decade. Sarah, I could kiss you!"

But Belinda hugged the papers to her chest instead, and Sarah almost sighed in relief. There was no way she'd be able to keep up with Belinda's rapid mood changes, and the witch still hadn't really told her what was going on. Sarah considered herself a fairly patient individual, but Belinda was starting to make her anxious, and being anxious made her cranky. The fact that she felt yanked around by the whims of fate didn't help, either.

"Who is Orinda, Belinda? Is she why you need help?" The witch did have a haunted air about her, as if she had been running from something the moment Sarah met her; Sarah supposed that could be the case. After all, she'd never met anybody else who voluntarily lived the way Belinda did. Perhaps being a self proclaimed witch and fortune teller drew all the wrong attention. She knew Jareth hadn't been too keen on her either, but…

At the thought of Jareth, Sarah had to close her own eyes and smother the sudden wave of rage that swept over her.

 _There's no reason_ , she tried to tell herself. _Absolutely no reason to be so angry. You haven't even seen him in years; he's done nothing. You've done nothing_. But her own thoughts didn't help the fact that she wanted to scream at him and she didn't even know why. Sarah tried to take a calming breath, but she was interrupted by Belinda.

"She's my wife, of course, if I really have to put it in your terms. We've been together for a very long time, but… also apart." Something in Belinda's eyes shuttered and she pulled in on herself just enough to appear that some part of her had withered away. "It hurts, Sarah. You have no idea, you can't know how much it hurts to be _pulled_ , to _see_ so far and so much, forever…"

All traces of Sarah's residual and irrational anger faded as she watched Belinda's shoulder's tremble. Belinda, in Sarah's mind, was strong. She knew things that Sarah couldn't even guess at and had access to the inner workings of the world. Sarah knew, of course, that Belinda was capable of being upset; she just never thought she'd see it. Belinda took deep, even breaths and placed the papers in the satchel handing off her shoulder. In the same movement, she pulled out shimmering grey yarn and knitting needles that looked like worn bone.

Sarah watched as Belinda cast on her first few stitches, moving with an inhuman speed. Before long, she had several inches of what looked to be like an improbably wide scarf; even though she was using thin needles, the stitches were loose and the yarn snarled frequently. Belinda swore under her breath and unraveled an inch of her work, trying unsuccessfully to untangle the yarn; no matter what she did, it slipped through her fingers and wound the knots tighter.

"Give me your hand," Belinda ordered, impatiently grabbing Sarah's wrist when she didn't immediately move. Belinda pursed her lips and pinched her fingers in the air just above Sarah's wrist. Sarah watched as her own red thread materialized, showing a dull red color with frayed fibers. It didn't look anything like she thought she remembered it when Belinda first gave it to her all those years ago, and Sarah didn't think it was something that would age with time. Her suspicions were confirmed when Belinda's face pinched in pain and she dropped Sarah's hand as if scalded.

"None of this is working. _Why_ isn't it working?"

It was a question that didn't need an answer; Belinda was already trying to make her knitting come out even, going slower this time and paying closer attention to where the thread twisted and refused to cooperate. No matter what she did, it kept slipping through her fingers. The more Belinda's yarn and knitting needles refused to cooperate with her, the more frantic she looked.

"Why don't you tell me what's wrong, and I'll do what I can to help?" Sarah placed her hands over Belinda's and gently slid the knitting needles out of the witch's grasp. "This knitting isn't helping you at all."

"It isn't knitting," Belinda snapped. "It's spinning, or as close as I can get these days. I've been cut off; Sarah, you don't understand. You can't. You don't know what you did… You _have_ to be the stag, you must, or we're all lost forever and Taliesin will never help me spin again. The short night is falling, Sarah, and it's falling on you."

The witch's words felt like prophecy and settled on Sarah with an uncomfortable weight. Sarah wasn't even sure that Belinda knew what she was saying; Belinda's eyes were wide but unfocused, as if she were staring at something that Sarah didn't see. Knowing how many hidden things there were in the world, Sarah didn't doubt that it was possible, and in fact found it likely. But her ramblings were fevered and were starting to make less and less sense the longer Belinda went on, as if the witch's mind was unraveling the same way her spinning was.

"Okay," said Sarah, trying to soothe her. She took Belinda's hand and led them both to the couch, where she sat them both down. "Okay. You weren't knitting. You were spinning. Can you explain what spinning is to me?"

Groaning, Belinda placed her hand over her eyes.

"It's seeing, and it's creating. _You_ have a place on the loom, your goblins have their own place; your parents, your friends, your enemies—all have places on the loom. And I helped to weave your lives with my sisters, but I've been cast out and the loom is still whirring; the house is not still."

Very little of that made sense to Sarah, but she nodded her head. Even though it galled her to admit even to herself, Jareth would probably know more… even if only because he had been around much longer. Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose and willed the sudden lick of anger away.

"And Orinda, your wife? Did she spin, too?"

Belinda erupted into peals of frantic laughter.

"Only my sisters and I can spin. But that's all we can do; without the poets or the bards, our work would rot on the loom. No, no, Sarah. Taliesin was a bard of the old traditions, but bards and spinners aren't supposed to fall in _love_ , you see. My sisters and the other poets tried to forbid us, but what cares a witch for a hangman's noose?" Belinda bared her teeth and clenched her jaw, clearly caught up in some unpleasant memory. "So I have been cut off from the loom and Orinda is disappeared because they can't just let us be _happy_ , they can't just let us _be_." She was breathing heavy and still hiding her face in her hands.

Sarah wondered if she should let Belinda cry it out; the pain she was expressing now had clearly been with her for a very long time, and it had taken its toll if her wandering was any indication. She didn't know her all that well, after all, despite the fact that it was Sarah's doorstep Belinda showed up on when she had nowhere else to turn. Sarah patted her shoulder and handed her a fistful of tissues.

"Her name isn't even Orinda," Belinda said in between hiccups. "That's just a pet name. Her real name is Taliesin."

Sarah hummed and wiped away what was left of Belinda's tears with a spare tissue while she turned over all of the information she'd been given in her mind. What Belinda was describing with her spinner sisters sounded a lot like the Fates from Greek mythology or their mythological counterparts from other nations. It was hard not to compare Belinda—normally bubbly, bright-haired Belinda—with the withered crones from one of her old textbooks. But surely, if Belinda meant to say that she was one of the Moirai, she would have just said so. Belinda might be confusing, but Sarah thought she always said what she meant. It was a rare quality, human or not.

"And your sisters and the other bards are… hiding her?"

"I've looked everywhere," Belinda admitted. "I've looked every _when_ , but she's nowhere. Which is why I thought…" her eyes lowered to Sarah's wrists, around which the red thread was twisted. "I thought you might help me. You've done the impossible before. You come from a family who makes a point of doing the impossible. It would make a great story," she added bitterly, "which is why I am sure they mean to include you. Besides, they'll be pissed with you for that whole _situation_ with the nothing. Somebody else was meant to slay it, I think. Start their own heroic journey."

"Well, tough," Sarah said, falling back on one of her father's common refrains. "If I've already thrown a wrench in their plans once, there's no reason I can't do it again." She offered the witch an encouraging smile. "Where do we start?"

Belinda stood and pulled the papers from Taliesin back from out of her bag. With her free hand, she reached out to Sarah and squeezed her fingers.

"Let's go to that forest of yours. It'll be quieter. Safer." She glanced around Sarah's apartment as if she were afraid it might be good. Sarah supposed that wasn't an unreasonable fear; just about anything could be listening, and it _could_ be reporting back to Belinda's sisters. But reason was not necessarily welcome in Sarah's heart.

"I don't want to go back. I can't," she said, pulse quickening. "I won't. We don't need to involve _him_." In her anger, she squeezed her hands into fists, oblivious that she was crushing one of Belinda's hands in her own. There is was, again; that irrational hatred made all the worse because Sarah _knew_ it made no sense. She couldn't figure it out, and wouldn't be able to do so in his presence.

"We _do_ because he's the only one with a realm I can be sure is safe. And the only one I can trust because he trusts you." Belinda challenged Sarah to deny her and waved Taliesin's papers gently. "He might have an idea about some of this, too."

Sarah pressed her lips together in an angry line and tried to keep from growling. It wasn't _fair_ —but that line of thinking never helped her, so she dropped it.

"Fine, but I can't promise that I'll stay long." Even agreeing to go was being more cooperative than she wanted to be, suddenly; Sarah understood that to Belinda, her change in temperament must be baffling. The problem was that she couldn't seem to make herself care. After all, it was confusing to her too.

"That's all I ask," said the witch frostily.

 _It isn't a lot_ , thought Sarah. _In fact, it's entirely reasonable, which makes it even more annoying_. But instead of rehashing her grievances, Sarah concentrated on pulling both herself and her passenger through the realms.

It had been a sunny but frigid day back at her apartment, which was part of the reason Sarah had her windows closed. But in the forest which had once housed the labyrinth it was warm, and the air was heavily perfumed with fresh blossoms. The seasons rarely matched up between the two worlds. She'd given up trying to figure out how to dress long before she stopped travelling to the forest altogether.

Nobody was there to greet them, which relieved Sarah. The last thing she wanted was a retinue of goblins shouting her presence to the treetops. The quiet gave her an opportunity to observe, just for a moment, what she'd missed in all of those intervening years. The trees were bigger, the grasses taller; the goblins had, to Sarah's surprise, built what looked like treehouses in some of the larger trees. Networks of rope bridges connected some of the bigger ones.

The only problem was that the hillock that Sarah remembered best, and so always chose to appear on, was rather exposed. Anybody looking toward it would see her and her travel companion immediately. Sarah considered tugging Belinda into better cover, but decided against it; if getting home as soon as possible was her goal, hiding like a scared child wouldn't help.

And that was how Hoggle found them, squinting into the distance.

"Still guarding entrances, Hoggle?" Sarah teased. Around him, at least, she could be herself. She could be happy. "How have you been?"

"Well enough," he said warily. "Didymus an' Ludo have been good too. Want me to tell that rat you're here?"

"No," Sarah said as Belinda said "yes." The goblin looked between them and shrugged. "He'll prolly be here soon enough leastaways. You've got a might big signature when you do that." He flapped his hand in her direction, clearly indicating 'that' was her entrance.

"Lovely," commented Belinda, who felt the tension. "I'm glad to make your acquaintance, Hoggle," she said, bending low so that she could shake his hand.

Whatever Hoggle might have said was drowned out by the flapping of wings and a great gust of wind. The Goblin King, as always had to make an appearance. Sarah gritted her teeth and kept her eyes on Hoggle. From the corner of her eye she could see that he was the same as always. She hadn't really expected him to change, but it was still jarring.

"Witch," he said, inclining his head towards Belinda. "And our erstwhile champion. How long has it been, Sarah?"

She felt the barbs in his words and wanted to rake her nails across his face for them. Her mood, which had been good enough when she was alone in her apartment, had since plummeted.

"You two can discuss what you need to, but I'll be going somewhere else," Sarah announced tersely. "Come find me and let me know when you want to go back," she directed at Belinda.


	3. Have It Built Again

Even as she stalked down the hill and into the forest, Sarah knew that she wouldn't be able to run away forever. She didn't _want_ to run away forever; she didn't want to think of herself as a coward, but it was so easy to be one. At any rate, it was either leave or gouge Jareth's eyes out. Sarah preferred not to get her hands too messy.

She did feel bad about leaving Belinda alone with him, though, but the witch could handle herself. If anything, Sarah felt she was the better equipped of the two at the moment to handle him, even with the witch's rambling and vague words. Sarah wondered how long that was going on-although all of their previous meetings had been rather brief, Sarah remembered Belinda as almost always being blunt, sometimes to the point of rudeness. The words "please" and "thank you" hadn't seemed to be in the witch's lexicon, which was why Belinda's plea had so shocked Sarah.

But Belinda wasn't stupid, Sarah reasoned; she knew how to get what she wanted. And Sarah's sense of honor prompted her to accept the task before even really knowing what it entailed. She _still_ didn't really know what it entailed. The thought made her frown, and she scowled at a perfectly innocent sapling as if it were the plant's fault. It wasn't. She knew that.

Sarah scowled anyway.

Not even the trees, once she was into the forest proper, helped to soothe her anger. She could tell which ones she planted herself all those years ago; they were in the very center and were the tallest by far. If she stood at the edge of the forest and looked up, she would be able to see their crowns looming tall over the rest. That was where Jareth held court, unless that had changed in the fifteen years she'd avoided the forest.

That was also the place Sarah would only go if she absolutely had to. There were too many things there to remind her of how things had been for it not to be painful.

Instead, she wandered towards the eastern edge of the forest, where she knew there was a spring. If it had rained recently, it would be much larger and faster than normal; she hoped it had rained. Although she hadn't grown up near any real bodies of water-she didn't count the small pond and drainage ditch at the park from when she was a teenager-somehow rivers made her think of home. She couldn't remember when she made the connection between rushing rivers and home. Perhaps it had always existed within her. She didn't know, and didn't particularly care to examine it.

Sarah found the swollen spring and allowed herself to rest on a flat boulder laying at its edge. She leaned back, closed her eyes, and imagined she could hear the calling of sea birds.

 _This helps_ , she thought, feeling the tension ease out of her shoulders. The sound of the spring wasn't loud enough for her to imagine the roaring of twin rivers, but it helped nonetheless. If it wasn't for some nagging feeling that she couldn't quite pin down, Sarah would have tried to sleep.

But nothing in a realm populated with goblins could remain peaceful or quiet for too long, and before Sarah had time to find the courage to poke, again, at the festering fury towards Jareth within her, she was disturbed.

 _It's for the better_ , she thought as she watched Ludo's lumbering frame weave through the trees. Didymus and Ambrosias weren't too far behind, but it was harder to catch sight of the dog-steed than it was its master or the tall beast. The livery that once adorned the dog had been removed; Sarah wondered when that had happened, but that reminded her that she hadn't seen her friends in years, which only made her angry again.

Sarah took a calming breath and tried to smile.

"Hello," she called out. "It's nice to see all of you." And she meant it. Whatever else was wrong with her, it hadn't altered her affection for her friends. That, at least, remained hers.

"Friend," Ludo ground out. The years hadn't been kind to his already stunted vocabulary; although Didymus was his brother in arms, now, the fox goblin still did most of the talking. Sarah could see that hadn't changed either.

"My lady," Didymus said, doffing his cap and trying his best to execute a bow while sitting on his steed's back. "It has been an age."

Sarah's smile faltered.

"It has," she acknowledged, patting the space on the boulder beside her. "Why don't you both sit down?" Ambrosias curled up at her feet, but Didymus and Ludo took places on either side of her. They were all silent for a beat; Sarah, for her part, was choosing her words carefully.

"I know I haven't been around and that I'm a bad friend. Again," she added pointedly. "But I want you-and Hoggle, when I can talk to him again-to know that it's not because of any of you." Sarah grimaced; her words sounded too much like what her father had said when he sat her down and explained that he and her mother were getting a divorce. Ludo and Didymus remained silent on that front, as Sarah suspected most of the goblins would, if she were to confide in them as well.

But as much as she wanted to be able to confide in her friends, Sarah found herself unable to. She opened her mouth once, closed it, and looked down at her hands. They were a bit dry, and one of her knuckles was cracked from the cold weather back home.

 _Just talk_ , she told herself. _Just open your damned mouth and talk; nothing is going to get better if you keep it all to yourself_. She parted her lips again, but couldn't form her words. Irritated with herself, she growled and hit the boulder beside her hip.

"There is something feral in my lady," Didymus noted, whiskers quivering. He placed a tentative paw on her knee and patted her reassuringly. Whether he was trying to reassure her or himself, Sarah wasn't quite sure.

 _He's right. Just try to talk_ , she ordered herself, swallowing hard.

"I think something went wrong when I traded my mortality away," Sarah admitted after a long pause. Her mouth was dry and her voice was low. Although she'd never voiced her suspicion before, it was easier than she thought it would be with Ludo's warm brown eyes staring at her. "I don't know what, but I feel this terrible anger whenever I see him. Jareth," she clarified. "I get angry and upset and I want to _hurt him_ and _I don't know why_."

Didymus pulled his paw away, clearly torn between comforting his lady and defending his king.

"But what's worse," Sarah admitted, hugging herself with her arms, "is that it doesn't feel like me. I know myself. I know my emotions. This doesn't feel like me; the anger doesn't feel like mine."

Ludo tilted his head, confused, and Sarah stared back at him. Of course he wouldn't be likely to understand. Ludo understood rocks, and friendship, and the steady thrum of the earth. He knew that she was upset, and that was enough for him. Didymus, on the other hand, understood honor, and gallantry, and refused to even try to understand despair. The nuances of human emotion might not have been completely lost on him, but Sarah suspected that he still clung to his rather binary worldview.

"I need help."

The creek gurgled beside them all, breaking the silence between the three-four, if you included the dog. Sarah waited for her judgement and hoped they would still want to be her friends. She wondered how she would fare in this world if they decided it would be too much trouble, that she was too unstable. Sarah couldn't even be upset with them if that happened; she'd agree with them, after all. But if she couldn't tolerate their king, and the goblins all turned their backs, where else did she have to turn? In another decade or two she'd have to figure out how to start her life all over again, and then what? She'd be alone in a distant, unfamiliar city.

But maybe if everything turned out okay with Belinda and her wife, just maybe she'd have those two as friends-or something close, anyway. Sarah smiled wryly.

"We did say that you should call upon us, should you need us," Didymus reminded her, having made his decision. "All of us. We gave no stipulations and, if my lady does not mind me saying so, it seems you need us quite badly right now."

Tears prickled in Sarah's eyes.

"And so," Didymus said, hopping off of his seat to execute another steep bow, "it would be our privilege to help you in whatever way we can. Excepting regicide, of course," he added nervously. "I am afraid my chivalric code does not allow for that."

Ludo stood beside his fox goblin brother and attempted his own bow, which was more of a shallow inclination of his head.

"We help," the beast said, ignoring Didymus's chastising over the imperfect bow. "We friends."

Sarah stifled a giggle and felt one tear slip down her cheek, which she wiped away.

"Thank you. Both of you."

She shouldn't have doubted them. They had more than proven themselves time and time again-more than she had, at any rate. If nothing else, she could have relied on Didymus's honor and Ludo's unwavering loyalty. _She_ was the one who couldn't be depended on, at least not at the moment. Sarah tried not to frown at the thought.

"Thank you for supporting me, but I probably should be getting back to Belinda and Jareth. Leaving those two alone is probably an even worse idea than me alone with him, and that's saying something at the moment." Sarah signed and hopped off the boulder. "But if you two wanted to come with me, I would appreciate it. A lot."

Didymus nodded his head, thinking; Ludo copied his actions.

"Perhaps it would be best if we also informed our friend Hoggle of your predicament. He may have some ideas, being the one with our king the longest."

And that was a perspective Sarah hadn't considered before, not that she knew too much of her friends' lives from before she met them. Ludo's might be impossible to coax out, Didymus seemed likely to talk about his freely, and Hoggle… Well, Sarah had never really considered Hoggle's past before at all.

But it did make sense that he knew the most about Jareth.

Sarah nodded her head and led them all back through the forest. Sarah held one of Ludo's massive paws while Didymus regaled them both with stories about his valor and all of the battles he had won since Sarah had last visited the forest. It seemed to Sarah that most of the battles were more petty goblin squabbles, and that most of them had been won due to Ludo's sheer size alone, but she let the diminutive knight continue without saying a word. Having him fill the silence was nice.

The return journey went by faster, and too soon Sarah could feel her mood souring again as she drew closer to Jareth. Sarah took her place next to Belinda, who was radiating fury and generally not helping Sarah's private struggle. She waved at Hoggle and avoided Jareth's gaze completely while Didymus pulled Hoggle side and whispered in his ear. Sarah was relieved to see that the two were far enough away that not even Didymus's version of a whisper could carry over.

"Ah, our brave champion returns."

Jareth's voice was all forced lightness and pleasantries, but Sarah could feel the claws that hid underneath. She continued to ignore him, choosing instead to reach behind her to hold Ludo's hand again.

"Your witch," Jareth sneered, "was explaining that she has a bit of a problem, and that we were somehow integral to solving it. And that you already agreed to help." Although Jareth did not like Belinda, Sarah could tell that most of his ire was directed at her.

"I have," she told him defiantly. "And I plan to." Sarah bit her tongue to keep herself from saying "with or without you." She didn't want to start a fight.

Jareth seemed not to share her sentiments.

"Of that, I have no doubt. You've always chosen to do what you felt best, and damn the consequences." He looked her up and down, and she couldn't help but to feel that he was still finding flaws in her. If it were anybody else, she wouldn't mind; age had given her perspective. But in front of him, she was still a twenty-something-or worse, still a teenager.

It made her angry.

Ludo patted her head, his big hand coming down harder than perhaps was completely comfortable, but it shook her out of her angry thoughts.

 _This isn't you_ , Sarah told herself, and turned it into a mantra. Before she could open her mouth and say something that would make the situation worse-again-Belinda came to her rescue in a sideways sort of way.

"Oh, would you two quit _quibbling_. I swear; gods are always so petulant. Should have done away with them _long_ ago and saved ourselves the trouble and not left it up to-ah." She paused, blinking, coming back to herself. "Ah, sorry, I got… I got swept up, you see. It's so easy for me to do. Anyway. Back to the matter at hand."

And without another pause, Belinda grabbed Sarah's wrist, jerking her forward. She tried to grab Jareth as well, but he was too quick; instead of suffering the indignity of being manhandled, he made a show of holding his own gloved hand out. Belinda rolled her eyes and grabbed his wrist anyway.

"Look," she commanded, bringing the faded and frayed thread into view. When Sarah saw it again, she winced; the thread was in bad enough shape as it was, but she couldn't help imagining what it would have been like finding her way through the darkness with nothing but its frailty to guide her. She suppressed a shudder.

"Has your end been hurting?" Belinda asked Jareth, prodding his wrist. The thread wrapped around his skin didn't look nearly as worn as Sarah's, and she tucked that information away for later. "Sarah's has been," Belinda added.

"I have been perfectly fine," Jareth said, as if it were a point of pride for him. Which it couldn't be-he probably didn't even know anything was wrong with their shared thread before just now. Sarah suppressed the urge to roll her eyes.

"Well then, this is a bit of a pickle."

Sarah got the feeling that Belinda had made a deliberate understatement, and that worried her more than the witch's trademark bluntness.

"Of your doing, no doubt."

Sarah would never, ever admit that in that exact moment, she agreed just a little bit with Jareth. Just a _little_ bit. But she didn't think that he had to be quite so rude about it because after all, nothing had been proven yet, and-

"Yeah," Belinda sighed, halting Sarah's train of thought. "Probably mostly. But it's also your fault a bit, too, you know, you great glittering git."

Jareth opened his mouth and curled his lips into the beginning of a sneer, but Belinda was on a roll. And once the weaver was on a roll, there was no slowing her down, let alone stopping her.

"If you weren't the one on the other end of Taliesin's own thread, then we wouldn't have had to figure out how to transfer it, and if we didn't have to figure that out, then I'd never have woven that awful king into your life-I do feel badly about that, to be fair-and we'd never have had to set you up to meet Sarah so that we could transfer the thread to _her_. And then Taliesin would never have gone missing, and neither of us would have ever had to see you again. So, you see. Your fault." Belinda paused for a breath and glanced between Sarah and Jareth.

 _Well, there's that mystery solved_ , Sarah thought, mouth dry. _No need to wonder why_ my _end is the bad one_. She felt like the earth had somehow been pulled out from under her feet and she'd been set to spinning in its wake, head over heels. But not in the good way.

Sarah was still trying to process the chain of events that Belinda had laid claim to, but Jareth was already ahead of her-and naturally, he picked the one that Sarah cared the least about at that moment.

"That end of this infernal thread belonged to _your wife?"_ He asked, as if his words were venom he was spitting out at the witch. He yanked his hand from Belinda's grip, and she did not fight it.

"Did I say that?" Belinda asked, looking between Jareth and Sarah. "I'm sorry, I… I'm having a difficult time staying in the here-and-now. What else did I say?" She looked confused and tired, and Sarah was torn between pitying her and kicking her out of the forest. _Everything_ was her fault-the labyrinth, the danger Toby was in, the loss of Sarah's mortality. All of it.

But kicking her out wouldn't solve anything, Sarah reasoned with herself. And if she herself had turned feral, as Didymus said, then Belinda was adrift now, too. Sarah couldn't-wouldn't-send her out into the wide world to fend for herself.

"I suppose I must have," she agreed when she did not get an answer. "Yes, Sarah's end was once Talisin's, but Taliesin did not want to be connected to you. No hard feelings, I hope." The witch looked at him nervously. "So I _might have_ broken the rules a little bit and tampered with fate just a smidge. And that is why she's gone missing. A weaver isn't supposed to have any connections like that, so when they found out I was forging a new thread for us both and helping _you_ to boot, well…" Belinda shrugged, looking through Sarah. "My sisters were not happy. They… They did bad things. They hurt… They took Taliesin."

Belinda's eyes were glazed and she mumbled incoherent words, staring down at her feet. Whatever she was seeing, Sarah knew it wasn't where they all were. Belinda was not seeing the grassy hilltop, and she was not feeling the warm breeze. Sarah took a step closer, out from underneath Ludo's protective grasp, and placed her hands on either side of Belinda's face.

" _Kriecht alle durch, kreicht alle durch, kriecht alle…"_

Tears rolled over and between Sarah's fingers, cooling quickly in the air.

"Belinda, come back. I don't know where you are, but come back. Listen." She drummed her fingers over with weaver's temples, mimicking a heartbeat. It was a trick she learned as Toby got older and his anxieties got the better of him.

Belinda's tears only came harder.

" _Den letzen wollen wir fangen_."

"Shh-hhh, Belinda. It's okay. We're here; come back now." Sarah pulled an unresisting Belinda down to the ground and placed her hands in the grass one at a time. "Feel where you are. Tell me where you are."

"I'm… I'm…" Belinda blinked, pushing the last few tears out of her eyes, which looked brighter and more lucid. "I'm in the grass, for some reason. What are we doing down here?"

Sarah stared at Belinda, aghast.

"You're not well," Sarah stated. "You're _really_ not well."

Belinda ran her fingers through the long grass, selecting certain blades seemingly at random. Sarah wasn't sure that the weaver-witch heard her at all, so she opened her mouth to repeat herself.

"No need," Belinda said. "Just watch."

Sarah closed her mouth and ignored Jareth's snort of derision from above her. The long blades of grass twisted in Belinda's hands until they started to form a sort of chain, all woven together. For grass, Sarah thought that it looked remarkably stable; Belinda tugged it once, demonstrating how well it held together.

"I drift sometimes," Belinda admitted, as if nobody had just witnessed it. "And sometimes… sometimes it is easier to use the words of others. Words can become difficult for me, and… Look. This is me." She held the woven grass up to Sarah's face, and Sarah raised a single eyebrow in disbelief. Belinda was no longer so stable a creature. "Or it was. But Orin-Taliesin… Without a thread between us, we could not be bound. And I can have no threads to me. It is forbidden. But, see! If I pull from the core, the thing that makes me, and give it to another…"

Belinda pulled up Sarah's hand, gently this time, and placed the longest blade of grass between Sarah's fingers. Sarah tugged on it with Belinda's encouragement. The whole woven chain fell apart, spiraled out of control; though Sarah still held her end, and Belinda kept a grip on her own, but the rest of the chain fell away. Belinda opened her mouth and seemed to choke on her words.

"So entangl'd and so lost a thing," she settled on mournfully.


	4. You Seem The Flower and Final Cause

Happily ever after.

That was how Sarah thought her life was supposed to go, all those years ago when she still felt young. She thought that perhaps she'd earned her happy ending, thought that maybe everything would go smoothly from then on in. After all, she'd defeated the villain. Again. She'd restored order where there had been none. Again. She'd rescued those who needed rescuing. Again.

But then she'd stopped aging, and the full reality of her trade crashed in over her. Well, she could deal with that. And she did. It was the price she had to pay for playing the hero once more, but it was over and she could live her life as normally as possible.

Sarah should have known that things in her life never went that smoothly; that something else was just waiting for her to let her guard down.

And here it was, delivered to her in the form of Belinda. And there was Sarah, playing a part in somebody else's story. Sarah thought that over the years, she'd gotten better at taking responsibility for her own actions. The run through the labyrinth had certainly helped in that regard. So Sarah felt a small amount of pride in owning her own mistakes; what she did _not_ like was taking responsibility for the mistakes of others. And, as it turned out, that is exactly what she had been doing.

She should be thunderously angry with Belinda. Sarah knew this, and she could even muster a strong sense of irritation towards the weaver. However, knowing she should feel something and actually doing it were two different things. As she watched Didymus help Belinda under the trees and into a hammock, all Sarah could think about was her future.

If it was true that Belinda sent some part of herself out with Taliesin, then Sarah wondered if she could expect a similar future for herself. She had, in effect, traded away a large chunk of her humanity, after all. Sarah frowned, following after the fox knight and the weaver. Belinda was clearly exhausted, both physically and mentally. Bags hung under her eyes and her dark skin was ashen; it almost appeared that the color in her hair had leeched it away from the rest of her. The weaver-witch was right; she really was unravelling, and Sarah doubted anything would be left of her at the end of it all.

Sarah set her mouth in grim determination. No matter what Belinda had done in the past, Sarah needed to know that the weaver could get better. After all, Belinda was the only other thing Sarah could think of that gave something of themselves to another besides herself. And _she_ wasn't going mad.

… Was she?

No, Belinda had to get better. And Sarah had to be the one to help her.

"Your witch certainly has some things to explain," Jareth said, conspicuously not looking in her direction. Sarah sighed and rubbed her temples.

"I know," she admitted, scratching behind Ambrosias's ears. Belinda's scattered thoughts and accidental confession gave her a lot to think about-gave them _both_ a lot to think about. She looked down at her shoes and noticed they were caked in mud.

"She didn't tell me any of that before I agreed to help, and now that I have…" Sarah let her sentence trail off. Now that she had, she couldn't just abandon Belinda, even if she was decidedly less eager to help overall.

Jareth seemed to understand her thoughts and nodded his head slightly, as if he'd expected her decision. He probably did, she reminded herself; sometimes they were more alike than she cared to admit, and he did have his own strange sense of honor. She frowned and tried to kick some of the mud off her shoes. If anybody asked back home, it would be difficult to explain it.

"There's some sort of… prophecy, or something, and I think it's got something to do with us. I'm not happy about it either," she snapped when she caught his single raised eyebrow. "But it is what it is, and it's not like I haven't lived through one of these before."

To Sarah's immense surprise, Jareth deigned to sit down next to her in the grass, his back up against a tree trunk. Her heart leapt into her throat, and she waited for the searing anger that did not come this time. Maybe she was getting better; she wanted to think she was getting better, at any rate.

"I dislike this revelation that I, too, am at the whims of a fate guided by somebody else."

Sarah snorted and rested her chin on her knees.

"Nothing quite like being knocked down a peg with the rest of us lesser mortals, huh?"

Jareth turned to face her, piercing her with an incredulous stare. Sarah frantically went over what she said in her head, trying to pinpoint what, exactly, could have raised his ire.

"You still count yourself among the mortals? After all this time?"

 _Oh,_ Sarah thought, frowning. He was right. She was used to the idea of no longer having her mortality. Although she wasn't wearing her aged glamour at the moment, it was something that she thought of every day. No part of her life back home was unaffected by it. Still…

"It's hard for me to break that type of thinking, I guess."

Sarah leaned her head against the tree trunk, stretching out the small of her back. She closed her eyes and thought back to what Belinda said, ignoring the part that hurt-the part that said everything, all of it, was Belinda's fault. At the same time, it was all for Taliesin, all for her love. Sarah frowned deeper, wishing she had something like that-perhaps not _quite_ as intense, but still… She had her goblins, and her strange magic, and Jareth, even if sometimes she wanted to claw his eyes out for reasons she didn't understand. Those were the things she had, and all of them, it seemed, were given to her by Belinda and Taliesin.

"There are myths," Sarah started, "that I guess are about Belinda, even if none of them fit quite right. Turns out women spinning the fate of humanity was a pretty common theme in human mythology." A small smile played across her face, but it wasn't happy. "The Greeks had something. The vikings too, I think. And… Shinto? I don't know if that sounds quite right…"

Sarah cracked an eye open to see Jareth staring into the middle distance, perhaps ignoring her words. It didn't matter; she was mostly just babbling anyway to fill the silence. She reached out to where Belinda lay curled on the hammock and pried the notebook from the witch's grip, firm even in her slumber.

The words still weren't anything she could read well; when they weren't in another language, they were twisting around on the page, refusing to stay in orderly lines when she tried to focus on them. It was probably a safeguard to keep others out, which irritated Sarah. Her own story was within the pages; shouldn't she be able to read it?

The snatches she caught were about a lion and a stag, which, to a degree, made sense. The lion died in the fight between the two, and Sarah couldn't fathom how a lion would lose against a deer. A headache started to burn between her eyes, and sighed heavily, folding the tattered pages together. Jareth plucked them from her grasp, earning himself another burst of anger from Sarah; he ignored her indignant grunt.

"Interesting," he said, drawing out the word; he didn't sound _interested_. He sounded angry.

"Can you read it?" Sarah asked sitting up. "I can't. Not much of it anyway. Some of it's in another language, and what I _can_ read has decided to… shift," she finished, not sure how to explain how to words moved.

"It is much the same for me," he answered, still flipping through the pages. "I can only understand bits and pieces. There's a lion and a stag-"

"I know," Sarah interrupted. "Belinda says I'm the stag."

"And they fight to the death," Jareth said, shooting her a sharp look. "The stag wins, but not without the lion attempting to… shift the odds in its favor by involving another party." Jareth put the pages down and stared at her contemplatively. Sarah snorted; of course the fates would make sure her opponent wouldn't play fair.

"That settles it, then," he announced. "I will train you to fight, so that you have a chance of winning."

Fear fluttered in Sarah's chest. She didn't want to fight. More specifically, she didn't want to fight _Jareth_ , not when there was a chance she would try and actually hurt him.

"No."

" _Yes_ , Sarah." His tone allowed no further protest. "You need to learn. I am the best qualified. I do not think you witch has ever held anything more deadly than perhaps a needle."

"But I win," Sarah tried to argue. "It's preordained, isn't it? It says I'll win. Right there." She nodded to the booklet.

"Then all the more reason to make it a sound victory. The fates are not on our side," he tried to reason with her. "They might attempt to change things. You cannot take this risk, not even if you've so cleverly bartered away your mortality. Think of your family," he finally said. "If not me, or those in the forest."

Sarah frowned, hating that what he said sounded reasonable. It was the same as studying for an exam when she'd already memorized the materials-there was no harm in being extra prepared.

"Fine," she bit out, eyeing him as he stood. Surely he didn't mean for them to start _now_. But any hopes she had about delaying were dashed as he held out his hand to help her stand.

"There are still some remnants of the old armoury. You may make your selection there, and we will begin."

Sarah stood without his aid and looked at him skeptically.

"Straight to the weaponry?" she asked, a single eyebrow raised. He didn't deign to reply to her skepticism, and Sarah had to hurry to keep up with his quick strides; it didn't take too long before she stood in the doorway of what was effectively a shack, staring at swords and bows and things she couldn't quite name but was sure was capable of harming someone.

"I get that it wouldn't fit the aesthetics you have going on, but wouldn't a gun be more effective?" Sarah didn't like weapons, but if she absolutely had to wield one, she would feel more comfortable with a modern one. Jareth ignored her words while Sarah reached out and picked up a tiny blade.

"I mean, I'm sure it would be quicker to teach me how to shoot than it would for me to use… whatever this is." And she thought of holding the blade and sliding it in between somebody's ribs, the imagery turning her stomach. Sarah put the blade back where she found it, brushing her fingertips off on her jeans as if to dislodge the feeling. "... Unless you don't know how to work a gun either," she said, watching as her light taunt hit its mark. "You could have just said so."

She stepped forward, eyeing the various weapons lining the walls or resting on stands. She didn't like the idea of using a sword for the same reason the thought of the dagger made her feel sick. And she didn't want to use a bow, either, remembering the gym class she took in college that had an archery component; her aim wasn't good, and she didn't relish the idea of trying to hit a moving target. But that didn't leave much else that she recognized

She tried picking up a mace, but it was too heavy and felt wrong in her hands. Likewise for the flail and the double-edged sword with _+VLFBERHT+_ inscribed on the side. That one she looked at for a while, trying to figure out if it was adorned with some sort of name; in the end, she decided that while none of the weapons housed within the shack were hers, that one definitely belonged to a particular person. She slid it back into its place and stepped away from it, almost bumping into the lone spear resting by itself in the corner.

It was tall-certainly taller than her-and topped with a gleaming bronze spearhead. It was not made for throwing, that much was obvious, and while she had to hold it in her hands, it gave more range than a sword. Sarah picked it up and tested the weight in her hands; it was substantial, but not overwhelming.

More than any of that, though, was that it felt right. It fit into her palms as if it had been made just for her, and the wood almost seemed to buzz against her skin.

 _Welcome home_ , it seemed to say.

"This one," she announced, running her hands down the shaft and to the bronze point. It would gleam in the sunlight, and in her mind's eye she could see it and taste salt water on her lips, could hear the roaring of a river as it emptied into the sea. Reflexively she licked her lips, but she tasted only her own skin. The absence made her feel empty, and she couldn't figure out why. She was so absorbed in her own thoughts-or were they somehow memories?-that it took Jareth placing a gloved hand on her shoulder to snap her out of it.

"An interesting choice," he said, and while Sarah knew that the spear meant _something_ to him, he kept his emotions carefully locked away and off his face.

"Whose is it?" Sarah asked, following him out of the shack, spear in hand. "It doesn't seem like something you'd have used yourself. It feels… older."

"It belonged to an old acquaintance," he said after a lengthy pause. "I have not seen her in several ages and have only the vaguest idea of what fate befell her when she left here." _Do not ask any more_ , the tone of his voice said.

"She died," Sarah said, conviction behind her words. Blinking, she looked down at the spear; the idea felt right, but like most things in her life at the moment, she didn't know how she came by the knowledge. Being in the forest felt like dreaming, but not necessarily in a good way. "I think," she added to temper her certainty.

"Hm," Jareth said, turning away from her again, signaling an end to that particular conversation. Sarah frowned but followed him back to a flat field all the same, leaning her spear against her shoulder. By the height of the sun in the sky, Sarah guessed that maybe four hours had passed since she arrived with Belinda, and she wondered if the witch was awake yet. Perhaps not, she decided. Belinda looked all but decimated when Sarah last saw her, and it was clear she'd been running on fumes for a long time.

"Have you practiced your magic at all lately?" he asked, a non-sequitur that gave Sarah pause. She hadn't, at least no more than what she needed to do to keep up her appearance. Why would she need to practice it if she could just speak or will what she wanted into existence?

"Not really," she admitted, feeling like the dentist had just asked her if she flossed at least twice a day.

Jareth made another contemplative noise and looked her up and down, focusing on her face as if he was looking for something in particular.

"So you would not notice any changes," he stated rather than asked.

"No," Sarah lied, even though she wanted to say _but I have, I have, and I don't like them._ Perhaps her knowing things she shouldn't was a change in her magic, but it did not feel quite right to ascribe that change to herself in that way. There was something else lurking in the shadowy parts of herself, but every time Sarah tried to catch it, it shied away. Or at least, that was how it felt. _Belinda might know_ , Sarah thought, _if only she could spit out the words._

"Perhaps, then, you should meditate," he said, though Sarah thought it sounded more like an order. She furrowed her brows and opened her mouth, but before she could offer up a retort, he was gone.

She _hated_ when he just disappeared like that.


	5. A Reaper Tired Reposes

Sarah heard footsteps approaching and screwed her eyes shut tighter. They weren't loud, but they were irregular and close together, as if the person walking was short and had a limp.

 _Not Jareth, then_ , she thought, and cracked an eye open. She opened her other one when she saw it was Hoggle.

"I'm supposed to be meditating," she said, sounding like a sullen child.

"Not doin' very well," he said, dropping to the ground beside her. Sarah shifted so that he could sit easier.

"I know," she said. "My problem is that there's just a lot going on in my head."

Hoggle considered her for a long moment, a frown etched on his craggy face. "Don't doubt it," he finally said. "Didymus told me about your problem."

He didn't need to elaborate on what her problem was. Sarah sighed and rubbed her temples with her fingertips, all pretense of meditating forgotten. It wasn't doing her any good anyway; the more she quieted herself, the easier it was for the restlessness within to wrest control away from her.

"We all want to help, you know. Bein' friends and all. But I'm the one who's been here the longest, so I'm the one who probably knows the most. 'Specially about that spear over there," he nodded towards the bronze spear, which Sarah had unceremoniously stuck in the ground. It gleamed in the sunlight, as if proud to be recognized. Sarah tore her eyes away from it and nodded to Hoggle, urging him to continue.

"Used to be some lady's, 'till it wasn't. She was a bad sort-full of fury and fire. Like you said you've been. Don't remember her name, 'Course, this was a really long time ago, just before that king came stomping through, so…" Hoggle paused, glanced at Sarah, and wrung his hands for good measure. "She and Jareth got into it. I won't lie to ya'; it was a bad fight. She limped off, left some of her stuff behind, and that's the last anyone here has heard of her."

Sarah frowned. Hoggle hadn't told her much, even if it was still more than she knew before. The mystery woman fighting Jareth was interesting, but not incredibly helpful. After all, that was all in the past. Wasn't it?

"Thank you," Sarah said anyway. "I'll see if I can find out any more, but at least I have somewhere to start now." She leaned over to give him a hug-the dwarf had been wary of her kisses ever since she first ran the labyrinth-she she could feel the tension radiating off of him. "It will be fine," she assured him. "It always is in the end, isn't it?"

And she supposed it was at least mostly true. One thing always lead to another, but up until recently she'd always ended up okay. Her attention wandered to the spear again, and she frowned. There was something about it, something magnetic, something-

" _You_ were meant to be meditating," Jareth said. "Not making idle chatter."

"I don't take orders from you," Sarah snapped, standing so that she wasn't at a disadvantage. Hoggle tried to make himself seem even smaller than he already was, hoping to avoid notice.

"Clearly," he sniffed, looking down his nose at her. "But perhaps you will heed a warning. Advice, if you will." He brandished the folded and tattered pages of the notebook at her. "It was rough going, I assure you, as this thing," he said, shooting a withering glance at the prophecy, "seems resistant to translation, but… You might find it beneficial to check on your brother. It seems as if he might be in some life-threatening danger." He said it casually, as if he expected that Sarah wouldn't care about her only other sibling. She could have set him right, but that would have wasted time.

Sarah was already gone.

* * *

Toby lived with his fiancee in their tiny rented house with their small pride of cats. It was Isobel who was fondest of the cats and unable to say no to any stray that wandered into her path. Toby often joked that was the reason she kept him around. Isobel's car was gone, which meant she was likely at work. Toby, however, seemed to be at home. Sarah's heart hammered somewhere in her throat as she pounded in the front door.

The seconds ticked by, feeling like minutes. Sarah knocked again, harder this time. If something had already happened to him… Sarah growled in frustration and prepared to break the glass window beside the door.

"Keep your hair on," Sarah heard Toby groan from the other side of the door as he unlocked the deadbolt. "I'm coming."

Sarah was so relieved, her knees felt weak. If he was well enough to make wisecracks, then whatever hint Jareth had gleaned from the notebook couldn't have come to pass yet. Maybe she could even stop it.

"My head is _killing_ me; did you have to hammer on the door like that?"

And there stood Toby, whole and unharmed, if not looking a little groggy. His curly blonde hair was ruffled, and his eyes were a little bloodshot, but otherwise he looked fine. Sarah breathed a sigh of relief.

"You're okay," she said, leaning against the porch railing behind her. "Good. I was… worried. You didn't answer your phone." Hopefully it was dead again-that was a terrible habit of his-and her lie wouldn't be discovered too quickly.

"It's just a hangover," he said, looking at her as if she'd grown another head. "Is mom still worried about the family reunion? I told her I'd talk to Isobel and let her know if we can make it or not as soon as possible…"

"No. I mean, I'm sure she'd be glad to hear from you, but… no. I just wanted to check up on you, and I was in the area. And I wanted to give you this." She pulled a leather and metal necklace out from the back pocket of her jeans. It hadn't been there a few minutes ago, but that was how her magic worked. As long as she expected it to be there, it would be. And as long as she expected it to work a certain way, it would.

"It's for good luck. And protection," she added. "I thought you'd like it."

Toby nodded and took the necklace from her.

"Yeah, it's cool," he said. "Give me a second, I've got to get some aspirin…"

Sarah slipped away and retreated back to the forest. _Life-threatening danger my ass,_ Sarah seethed. _He just had a hangover…_ But he'd said it was a _killer_ hangover, so perhaps Taliesin's prophecies were literal in the worst possible way. Sarah snorted and brushed off her clothes; travelling magically always made her feel musty, somehow.

If things really were so literal, then Sarah thought she should maybe be on the lookout for an actual lion and an actual stag duking it out somewhere.

She should have known her life wouldn't have been that easy. When she made it back to the area she'd left Jareth and Hoggle on, she found that Hoggle had fled, but Jareth was still there waiting with a scowl on his face.

"Ready yourself. Your training starts now."

Sarah blinked back at him, his words taking their time to make their impact.

"Wait, fighting training? Right now? As in this second? Ow!" She cried; he'd tapped a wooden walking stick against her knuckles. "Okay, okay, jeez! Keep your hair on; you _could_ ask how Toby is, you know, but since you _didn't_ , I guess I'll go ahead and tell you he's perfectly fine anyway. And my magic works just fine. I gave him a protection amulet."

She had a second-half of a second, really-to consider that she wasn't blazingly angry with him, and another moment to wonder why that was before she was on her back in the grass. All of the air that had previously been in her lungs was expelled, and Sarah took a few gasping breaths.

"What was that for?" She asked, feeling her anger now.

"You must always be prepared for an attack. Your enemy will not wait for you to finish pleasantries." He twirled the walking stick in his hands, having just used it to sweep her feet out from underneath her. Sarah glared up at him.

"You didn't even give me a chance-" she protested.

"Neither will the person trying to kill you."

She growled low in her throat and used the spear, which she had abandoned earlier, to help her stand up. As if moved by a force outside of herself, she pulled it from the earth and brandished it at Jareth, dropping into an offensive stance. Her legs were spread, her knees bent slightly; he would not be knocking her off her feet again.

"Try it again," she dared him, and when he did, she knocked the staff away with the butt of her spear. He tried again, and she deflected again. When he hit her right forearm hard enough to make her fingertips go briefly numb, she hit him back harder. There was a strange poetry to their back-and-forth, and it felt, in a way, like going home.

Sarah bared her teeth at him, noticing a weakness on his left side. She hefted the spear and knocked his weapon away, then raised it again to aim for his heart.

His eyes widened in shock, disbelief-

Sarah's grip tightened on her spear. This was it; she would aim for his chest and tear his heart out, still beating, and then-

She dropped her spear and clutched her head, gasping for air that felt too thin.

"I almost killed you," she breathed out. "I was going to kill you, and some part of me wanted to. I… You…" Sarah paused and then spread a hand over her stomach. "I remember that sword you pulled from the armory. I remember you… Right here," she indicated a wide slash from her right shoulder and down to her navel. "But that never happened. Why is that in my head?"

She glanced up, shaking, to see that Jareth's face had gone carefully blank.

"Wake the witch," he finally said, his words curling around the hatred coating them. "I have no doubt that much of this is her doing as well."

And, as if disposing of something he had no particular desire to see-which Sarah thought was perhaps the truth-he magically dropped her beside where Belinda was still sleeping on the hammock. Sarah's mood was not improved by being so disposed of, especially not when she was feeling so vulnerable.

 _Sure,_ she thought. _Maybe it's a little much to expect some compassion or reassurance after I_ technically _just tried to kill him, but…_

Sarah reached out and tapped Belinda's shoulder, determined to get to the bottom of the latest curveball life had thrown her.

 _I couldn't control myself. Is it really my fault, then?_

Belinda blinked up at her, still looking dazed. There was, again, that pull Sarah had to protect the witch, and Sarah had to remind herself she was angry with Belinda.

"I need your help figuring out what's wrong with me," she said bluntly. "And since I just tried to kill Jareth with this stupid spear," she shook the offending weapon in her hands, "it really can't wait."

Belinda blinked at her once more, then twice, and screwed up her face in confusion.

"I know the thread is fraying, but really, Sarah. Killing him?"

"It wasn't me!" She protested, resisting the urge to stamp her foot like a child. "I mean, it was, but… Look, ever since I traded away my mortality, things have been… wrong. Before you ask, my magic is fine, and aside from the fraying thread which wasn't supposed to be mine in the first place," she shot a glare at Belinda, who ignored it like always, "almost everything else is fine. Except… I can't stand Jareth. It doesn't make any sense. One moment I'll be fine, and the next… Well…"

She gestured with the spear, which finally caught Belinda's attention. The weaver focused on the bronze tip, reaching out to trace the edges with a fingertip.

"Oh, hell, Sarah. We really messed up."

"We?" Sarah snarled.

"Nobody asked you to give away what made you _human_ ," Belinda snapped back. "And I'm not surprised at all that my sisters picked _her_ to replace. Ugh," she grunted. Belinda looked Sarah over again and ran her hands down her face. "Look, sit down. I don't want you standing with that spear while I'm within poking range."

Sarah sat down and waved her hand, urging Belinda to continue with whatever explanation she'd deign to give.

"A while ago, there was this goddess who was travelling around. For whatever reason, she wanted Jareth as her lover, but, well… he disagreed, I guess; I don't know _all_ of the details, just what got woven into the tapestry. She got hurt really bad, so she wandered off to lick her wounds. But because battle was kind of, like, her thing, she got caught up in another before letting herself heal. She died." Belinda looked down at her hands, and Sarah, letting herself feel a little empathetic, could see how the story of an immortal dying would worry another immortal. But still…

"If she was actually immortal, how did she die?"

"Her body did, but not her… spirit, if you will. Her powers. Her name was Ishtar, and I think, Sarah, that she's living in you now." By the way that Belinda chewed her lip and refused to look her in the eyes, Sarah knew that there was something else she wasn't saying. It wouldn't do any good to try and drag the information from her, either. Belinda was like a force of nature; she wouldn't do something she didn't want to.

"What else did the notes say?"

Belinda buried her face in her hands.

"The stag defeats the lion in battle," Belinda whispered. "The lion's den will be cleansed by fire. The stag's younger kin will fall ill, which in turn will lead the stag to seek out the lion, and then they fight."

"I already checked on Toby. He's fine-he just had a hangover. According to that, I should already be looking for this other person." Sarah frowned. "Should I be? I don't feel ready."

If she was the stag, then she would be preordained to win. She shouldn't _need_ preparation, like she told Jareth, but the way that Belinda looked at her dented her confidence.

"I don't think preparing yourself will do much good," Belinda said quietly. "If you'd like, we can work on your anger. It might help to have you feel more like… you."


	6. The Goddess Held Her Seat

Knowing what was wrong with her made dealing with it that much easier. Every time she felt that now-familiar anger rise, or felt the urge to strike out at somebody, Sarah reminded herself that it wasn't her. The anger she felt, the sudden shift in mood-none of it was her. Sarah found it easier to hunker down and wait for it to pass after Belinda's revelation.

"Think of it like melting ice," Belinda advised. "It remembers its previous shape, but if you give it enough time, it will reform itself in your image."

So Sarah gave it time.

The goddess might have died, but she left her mark on her power, the thing that survived her. Sarah intended to make it her own, if she was going to have to live with it. And what better way to make it her own than to use it?

It wasn't something that she could bend easily to her will, but now that she knew how to approach it-coaxing it rather than using it like a tool-it went much smoother. After a while she was even able to have polite conversations with Jareth and enjoy herself. On one or two notable occasions, she even got him to crack a genuine smile, which was something she hadn't seen in a long time. Sarah realized that in trying to muddle through her problems alone, she had done far more damage than she ever intended. It would, no doubt, be an uphill battle to fix whatever relationship they'd had last.

Belinda taught her how to see different types of magics, to pluck at the strings around her and tweak them as she wished.

"You'd never be a weaver," Belinda remarked with a smirk. "But if you worked at it for another hundred years or so, you might make a passable fortune teller."

Hearing Belinda's words, Sarah pulled herself from the tide of magic and rolled her eyes. It was easy to see why Belinda had something of a superiority complex. Not only did she traverse a web of magic and fates that made Sarah dizzy to even think about, but she was one of only three beings who could do so. The fact that the other two effectively disowned her meant little in the face of it all. Every now and then the weaver-witch would say something that reminded Sarah that Belinda had had a hand in everything that had happened in the world. Whatever calamitous events or beautiful victories Sarah could name, they all bore the fingerprints of Belinda or her sisters. It was humbling-and sometimes annoying, when Belinda threw it out casually.

Belinda's training granted Sarah other knowledge as well. Whenever Belinda's mind wandered-whenever she started talking in riddles or quotes-it meant she had followed the threads too far. it happened to Sarah, once; as an exercise, she tried looking a few days ahead into the life tapestry of a nearby rabbit and quickly found herself drowning. Multiple paths spread out in front of her, all clamoring to be viewed at once. One stood out, strong and shining, and Sarah reached out for it only to be pulled back at the last moment.

She returned from her daze cold and clammy, and immediately rolled over to dry heave.

"Taliesin got sick after her first attempt too," said Belinda, who was holding Sarah's hair back for her. When nothing came up, Belinda let it fall back around Sarah's face.

"I never want to do that again," Sarah croaked, still reeling from the experience. She rolled away from Belinda so she faced the sun, and then closed her eyes. As soon as the world stopped spinning, she was sure she would feel better.

"Where do you think she is?" Sarah asked after a beat of silence. "All of this is to find her, right? But you never talk about her." She closed her mouth tight, fighting another wave of nausea. Belinda remained silent until Sarah cracked one eye open to look at her.

"The tapestry that your life-in everyone else's lives, too-is woven into is a finite thins. I saw, once day, that one of my sisters allowed for it to be swallowed up in a void. I wasn't going to allow that to happen, so I set certain things in motion." Belinda gave Sarah a fleeting, unreadable look.

"You know what happened next," the weaver said, motioning towards Sarah's wrist. "As long as my sisters control the loom, thy will try to finish the tapestry, if we want to continue with that analogy. And if the tapestry is completed…" She fluttered her hands, imitating something being blown away in the wind.

Sarah opened her mouth, intent on telling Belinda that while she might have been the source of much heartache, she was still reason they were there at all.

"Don't misunderstand," Belinda cut Sarah off with a sharp smile. "I am not that generous. A world without Taliesin is not a world I care about. That's all. I like you, and hope that we can call each other friends, but… If I lost Taliesin, I'm not sure I'd care a whole lot about what happened to this world."

The frank callousness in Belinda's voice took Sarah off guard. Of all the things she would have expected her to say, that hadn't really crossed her mind.

"I see," was all Sarah found herself capable of saying. She didn't trust herself to add anything else, or to keep the anger she felt-not Ishtar's memory, this time-from seeping into her voice like acid. It was time, she thought, for a break from Belinda, her magic, her casual inhumanity, and they way she kept looking at Sarah like she'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

As much as she didn't relish being covered in bruises, perhaps it was time to see if Jareth was still willing to train her. He had been understandably hesitant to after the last debacle, and so Sarah took to trying to access Ishtar's memories. It seemed the goddess was as recalcitrant in death as she likely was in life; whenever Sarah wanted her insight, she never got it.

Without another word, she stood and left Belinda, taking her spear with her. Hopefully Jareth wouldn't make her run laps again while he wandered off, too upset to even look at her.

She found him in the armory, peering at the strange longsword Sarah had passed up that first day back. He looked at it as if it might have been an old friend, once upon a time, but now held bitter memories. _Probably something like myself,_ Sarah thought with a frown. She cleared her throat to announce her presence, and noted how he didn't even jump.

"I don't want to run in circles today," she said. "It was your decision to teach me how to fight, and… I know things didn't exactly go to plan, and we ran into some unforeseen problems, but…" Sarah breathed out, wishing that just for once, she could say what she really meant when he was concerned. He raised a single tapered eyebrow at her, and she could almost hear him say do go on.

"Look, I'm sorry," she finally said, hating how her voice cracked at the end. "I know I've been awful lately, and I hurt your feelings." Way to downplay it, Sarah, she mocked herself. "I had her in my head and I thought I was going crazy. And, my God, does she ever hate you."

Jareth snorted and then picked up the sword. It was strange, to see him wield something that looked so heavy.

"But that's not an excuse. I just wanted you to understand."

Jareth nodded and then notioned for her to leave the armory.

"Ishtar thought to take me as her lover, once," he said, startling Sarah into turning around and looking at him. "But it was my understanding that she was not so kind to those she wanted, and so I refused her. She left. Your ancestor came swooping in, and the rest, as you say, is history. Up," he said, and for a moment Sarah just stared at him, bewildered. "Your spear," he drawled out, as if bored.

Sarah raised her spear into what felt like a defensive stance. Ishtar's fury would come rising to the surface now that sarah was around Jareth, and with it, her ability to mow down an enemy. He lunged for her with an exaggerated and slow movement, and Sarah easily stepped to the side.

"You are nothing like her," he said, nearly catching the side of her head with the flat of his sword in an unexpected swing. her spear, almost as if under its own power, blocked the swing and smacked the sword away. Sarah narrowed her eyes.

"Do not become her," he cautioned.

Sarah landed a light blow to the back of his leg but earned herself a jab in the shoulder from the pommel. Arcs of pain traveled up her arm.

"Do I have a choice?" She asked, finding herself having to retreat from the wide swing of his sword. It didn't seem fair, her fighting with a bronze-age weapon while he had a whole sword-but then, he'd never really been one to play fair. "If I have to kill this other person because some stupid prophecy said I had to-" and there it was, the familiar flicker of red-hot anger. "Do I even have a choice?"

He didn't have an answer for her, and Sarah found out too late that was because he was using her momentary distraction to try and wrest her weapon from her.

"That's not fair!" She protested, barely managing to hang onto she shaft of her spear. In a real fight, she wouldn't have stood a chance against him.

"Your opponent won't be either," he pointed out. "Why else do you think I had you 'running in circles', as you so aptly put it?" Sarah frowned and opened her mouth, looking for an answer.

"There is no chance you'll be ready for a fair fight, so you'd best be prepared to run."

He lunged once, as if to punctuate his words, and Sarah used his change in balance to sweep his feet out from underneath him.

"Ha!" Sarah crowed. "Got you. Finally-"

Except that he had her, again, yanking her ankle so that she tumbled down on top of him. If she had been expecting playful retribution, she was completely and utterly wrong. He rolled her over so that it was her back against the grass, trapping her hips between her knees and holding her face in his hands.

"You will try, won't you?"

Sarah swallowed hard. "What?" she asked, her voice too high to her own ears.

"To win," Jareth clarified. "To stay. As I'm sure you've figured out, Sarah, immortality does not mean what you think it means."

"Oh," Sarah breathed, still trying to figure out how, exactly, they ended up in the position they were in. He lowered his face to hers, and all thought processes stopped dead in their tracks. She was sweaty and bruised and he still wanted to kiss her, even though she tried to kill him not that long ago and was at least partially possessed by the memories of a goddess that had tried to do the same much, much longer ago. And that was just the beginning. Her mind whirled.

"This is so messed up," she sighed, and he sat up to look at her, grinding his hips against hers. Whatever he'd been planning, she'd clearly stopped with her ill-timed words.

"I mean, not this," she waved a hand to indicate their positions. "Well, maybe a little. But thing about everything that's happened. It's a little much, isn't it? And even though-"

He kissed her. Again. And Sarah would have been royally pissed about him using his mouth to shut her up if he hadn't slid his hand up her shirt at the same time, making her gasp.

"Bath," she blurted out when he withdrew for air, face heating in embarrassment. "I mean. A bath. I want to take a bath. _Alone,_ " she added when he smirked. He stood and she scrambled out from underneath him, tugging her shirt back down so that it covered her stomach.

A bubble bath. That's what she wanted. Just a few hours to herself without goblins or kisses that clouded her judgement or weavers or prophecies hanging over her head like the sword of Damocles, waiting to fall. She'd never get that back in the forest, and so she found herself slinking away to retreat back to her apartment.

The scent came first, as it often did; Sarah still frequently kept her eyes closed, finding the sudden switch disorienting. It smelled almost like someone was having a barbeque, all smoke and char, and while it wasn't completely unheard of for someone to use a portable grill on their balcony, it didn't seem like the weather was appropriate for it.

Sarah felt heat, and in the space of a heartbeat opened her eyes.

Flames licked at her bedroom door, moving rapidly towards where she stood in her living space. Plumes of smoke rose to the ceiling, and under it all, Sarah could smell kerosene. Shock made her breathe in sharply, which she instantly regretted. Hot smoke filled her lungs, and Sarah bent over, coughing. Forget the bubble bath. She needed to leave, now.

She found herself back at the edge of the forest with very little time to regroup. Belinda was at her side, pushing Ishtar's spear into Sarah's hands. In the forest, goblins screeched. The scent of smoke still lingered in Sarah's nose. In the chaos, Sarah could barely tell up from down or left from right. Everything was too loud, or too bright.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Belinda whispered, stroking Sarah's cheeks while tears streamed down her own. Sarah glanced up, trying to clear her eyes from her own stinging tears.

And there on the horizon stood a warrior wearing an antlered helm.

* * *

 **A/N**

So a comedy of errors lead to me double-posting chapter five, and then having to rewrite this chapter from memory. Ah, technology, you fickle beast. And if you think this is all heppening quickly, well, you'd be right.


	7. I See the Shadows Falling

It took approximately ten seconds for her world to crumble around her, for the distant, nagging feeling she'd had to be fully realized.

Those seconds trickled by, as if time had slowed down to a stop for Sarah, benevolently letting her catch up. Her gaze flicked from the warrior who had broken into her realm to Belinda, and then to the spear in her grasp. The dreams she'd had with lions roaring in the background all those years ago, her burning home, Belinda's odd expressions all fell into place.

Sarah was not meant to be the stag. She never had been.

"No," she said, as if denying it further would accomplish anything at all. She should have seen it—should have let herself realize it—much sooner. Another glance at Belinda told Sarah that the weaver was far away again, picking at the threads of fate and time she had access to.

"Lo, warriors, saints, and sages; from out the vanished ages," Belinda recited before shaking her head and opening her mouth again. "To the land of no return, to the road whence there is no turning…"

Sarah wanted to grab Belinda and shake her, to beg her to speak plainly for once. But Belinda was tangled up in a web partly of her own making, and could not be compelled to make sense when there was none to be made in the first place.

She stepped away from the forest, drawn out not by her own volition. A solid thunk and the quivering of a tree branch signaled the end of her adversary's patience, short that it was. Above her head, having missed by inches, was an arrow embedded a third of the way up the shaft.

The warrior had not missed; it had been a warning: join the fray or be cut down like a coward.

Her feet took her closer to what was her own probable doom, but she felt numb. At her wrist, her thread burned—no doubt a working of one of Belinda's sisters, like at least part of the mess she found herself in.

"Quit your stalling, so that this can be done," shouted the helmed warrior, and Sarah was only a little surprised to hear how feminine the voice sounded. She licked her lips and held her hands up in a placating gesture.

"We don't need to fight," Sarah said, hoping that pretty words would be able to save her again. _Say your right words…_

"We do," the warrior said instead, pulling back hard in her bowstring. "They promised a cure for my brother."

Sarah heard in the woman's voice the same desperation she'd felt herself when she thought Toby was in danger. With a start, she was reminded that this woman, set up to be her enemy by an uncaring fate, had a life all of her own.

"Please," Sarah started to say, her muscles already tensing underneath her. She was already moving by the time the arrow was released, and it missed her by a hair's breadth. Part of her—the trade for her mortality that still remembered Ishtar—wanted to rush in, to close the distance between them and end the encounter. Running was for those too weak to defend themselves.

But the rest of Sarah remembered her promise to do what she could to win, even if the prospect was even more bitter now than before. According to those pulling the strings, she was the villain; the irony was not lost on her.

The horned warrior drew, pulled, and released again, and only missed Sarah by chance. She was fleeter of foot than she had been before, and she owed that to the endless paces Jareth had put her through.

She remembered her breathing, how to best work her lungs, how to work through the pain that would build up in her muscles. At least this ground was mostly flat, and she wouldn't have to dodge trees and underbrush…

A feint to the left saw another arrow gone, head buried in the earth. Sarah had no idea how many the warrior brought, but she knew—hoped, rather—that she would run out sooner rather than later.

"Stand and fight! Coward!"

An arrow whistled as it sailed by Sarah's ear, and she swore she felt the fletching brush by her hair, far, far too close for comfort. She held her cheek, not sure is the was imagining the sting or not.

Sarah ignored the taunt and spared a precious second to glance at the archer. She'd nocked another arrow, but seemed hesitant to fire it. Maybe, just maybe, Sarah's luck was starting to turn around.

Or not.

Her foot found what might have been the only rabbit warren in the field, and her ankle buckled under her with a sickening pop. Her eyes watered, but she refused to let herself fall down

Ignoring the pain in her leg, she gritted her teeth and dashed in a wide arc, still too far for a spear to do any damage, but just right for a bow and arrow…

A glint of sun on metal stopped both her feet and what little logical thought she'd maintained her hold over. The sight brought her stumbling to a stop, and she wished she could kick herself for not demanding that Jareth stay out of the fight. He raised his sword—the same one with the strange inscription—and all of Sarah's attention was focused on its upward swing. If Sarah allowed this to happen—if she allowed him to interfere—then not only would he be bringing one of those reviled prophecies to fruition, but he would further cast her in the role of villain. Both of them.

Whether it was pride or vanity that fuelled her actions, she did not know.

Sarah opened her mouth and, still holding her spear, raised her voice to tell him—beg him— to stop. The arrow found its mark before she even realized it had been released. Sarah staggered back, the breath stolen from her lungs.

All noise but the blood rushing in her ears and the sound of her ragged attempts at breathing were silenced. When she looked down, it was to see the feather end of an arrow blooming from her Celiac plexus, right below where her lower ribs joined up.

Dark spots flickered in her vision. She ran hot and cold at the same time, and recognized this in a clinical, detached sort of way. _I am dying. I am going to die_ , she realized. And then, she thought: _but I am not supposed to die_.

She wondered how much of herself would transfer to the next unlucky soul to be graced with godhood, or if Ishtar would swallow her up again. And then she realized: dying, for gods or whatever half creature she'd become, was not the same as it was for mortals. Ishtar was not dead, but only through a technicality; Sarah might just fall victim to the same technicality herself.

The second arrow hit her in her right shoulder, sending Sarah spinning. Her arm went numb, and she wasn't sure if she still held her spear or not, could no longer see to look.

By the time Sarah hit the ground, she was what she would have called dead.

* * *

The helmed warrior was dead, her drawing arm nearly severed from her torso. The familiar weight of his sword helped to slice through skin and muscle, making it impossible for her to fire another arrow. One more sweep stilled her heart for good.

Still, it was too late; Sarah was already on the ground. He could see, even from far away, that her eyes were still open, still staring wide into the sky but unseeing.

Knowing a foe was dead would have, at one point in time, brought him satisfaction. But there was no succor to be found here, nothing to assuage the hurt. Sarah, as he knew her, was gone-had been gone, though he did not know it at the time. All beings were cyclical, in their own way, so it was probable that Sarah would come back, in some form. And no doubt, she would be made to follow whichever path the Weavers set out for her again.

Jareth narrowed his eyes, watching as one of the three witches in question kneeled by Sarah's side. The other two might have been beyond his grasp, and he doubted that he would ever cross paths with them. But this one…

This one, he could do something about. Sarah could be well and truly avenged. In his hand, he gripped the sword tighter, and in a matter of moments he was at Belinda's side. Sarah, he refused to look at.

"You can't kill me," she said patiently, as if explaining it to a child. Jareth only readjusted his grip.

"And even if you could-which you can't-it would be an exceedingly stupid thing to do. So." Belinda glanced up at him, raising a single eyebrow as if daring him to try. It couldn't hurt to try.

Could it?

He narrowed his eyes at the witch.

"You will bring her back," he ordered. "You will use what is left of your powers to bring Sarah back, or I will-"

"I can't," Belida said. "Wherever she is, it's up to her, now. If she wants to come back, and has the strength to do so, then she will. But if she doesn't want to, or can't…" Belinda motioned to the arrow in Sarah's chest. "There's no medicine in any age that could fix that. I'm sorry, for what it's worth, that it had to be like this."

Jareth blinked down at her and then dropped his sword; it fell harmlessly in the grass beside them. Sarah's face was still warm, he noted as he smoothed her dark hair back. Still warm, but her eyes were already glazing over. He closed them one by one, ignoring how his fingers shook and that Belinda watched all the while.

"You knew it would end like this. You, witch, let her think she would be the victor." And Sarah had been _so certain_ that the little handwritten scraps of paper had held the key to her destiny that she hadn't even wanted to learn to defend herself. _Stupid girl_ , he thought to himself bitterly. _Naive. Trusting_. He snapped the arrow in her shoulder where it met her skin so it could not serve as a reminder as he looked at her. Blood and gore had never particularly bothered him-not when he was a kingslayer, and not when he slew the Weavers' champion, but looking at Sarah bloodied and pale made bile rise in his throat.

Belinda shrugged as if she didn't care, but avoided looking at the body between them.

"I was pretty sure, yes. Not completely, but certain enough to plan for things. She should be finding Taliesin soon, and then… Well, then we will see if she is strong enough to come back."

Jareth contemplated the two women in front of him, both living and dead. He twirled the broken arrow in his fingertips, and then he drew his lips back in a facsimile of a smile.

"You might not be able to die, but if she does not come back, witch, this I swear: there are worse things than death, and I will make you experience every single one."

Belinda looked at him then, really _looked_ at him, and searched his face as if she thought she might be able to detect a lie.

"I know," she said simply.


End file.
